Customer Retention: 50 Tools to Build the Perfect Customer Experience

Everyone knows how crucial retention is, which is why there's a million companies out there promising you that their tool is the key to keeping your customers successful and happy. With such an overwhelming number of options, knowing which ones to pick is terrifying.

That's why we're here to break down 50 of the best customer retention tools around and tell you what makes them special, so that you can choose the best ones for your business.

Analyze How Customers Use Your Product

You need to know what your customers are actually doing with your product to make sure it's providing them with real value. The user actions you choose to track depend heavily on your product, but luckily, there's always an analytics tool out there that can uncover the exact data you need. These are some of our favorites.

1. Target the Right Prospects with KissMetrics

Hiten Shah blazed new trails in the analytics space when he started KissMetrics, and it's still one of the best tools around. One of its most useful features is that it lets you view your customers' retention stats by acquisition channel. That way, you can devote your marketing spend to the places that bring in customers who stick with you for the long haul.

2. Find Your Stickiest Features with Amplitude

Amplitude is the best option for finding your product's sticky features. It quantifies everything your customers do and lets you group them by what they're doing with your app. Comparing retention across those cohorts lets you separate the wheat from the chaff and see which features keep customers coming back.

3. Nail the Basics with Google Analytics

When it comes to web analytics, Google Analytics is the tried-and-true solutionnearly everyone is familiar with. It's great for basic stuff like measuring active users or looking at churn for different acquisition cohorts. Those metrics are the beginning of understanding the big picture of your product's overall retention.

4. Optimize Site Design with Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg shows you which parts of your site customers click on and scroll to the most. While raw data and spreadsheets can tell you a lot, they don't always give you a clear window into how your customers actually interact with what you've built. Heat maps let you look at your site through your customers' eyes and see which parts they're drawn to.

5. Design the Perfect Mobile App with Appsee

Think Crazy Egg for your mobile app. Heat maps are even more valuable on mobile because there's so much less real estate on the screen. You can't afford to waste any of that limited space on stuff your customers don't care about.

7. Get the Full Picture with Mixpanel

Mixpanel can do it all: event tracking, funnel views, A/B testing—you name it. Over the last seven years, it's become one of the most widely used analytics platforms in the game, with tons of high profile customers like Airbnb, Uber, and Spotify.

8. Capture Every Customer's Every Action with Heap Analytics

Heap Analytics is another great way to see how the actions users take on your site correlate with retention. It captures every single thing your customers do—rather than actions you choose in advance, like with most analytics providers—whether it's on your site or your mobile app. That makes it a great option for early-stage companies, who aren't yet sure which customer behaviors are most significant.

9. Build Features Your Customers Want with Indicative

If you're not shipping updates and constantly improving your product, you're getting left in the dust. When you deploy a new feature, Indicative's easy-to-use analytics platform lets you see how much your users engage with it and how that new feature impacts retention.

10. A/B Test Away with Optimizely

Optimizely is the go-to for A/B testing software, making it easy for non-technical folks to run experiments. That lets you get scientific when you look for ways to improve your product, rather than just guessing.

11. Test Your Mobile App's New Features with Apptimize

Apptimize lets you roll out new features to groups of customers rather than to everyone all at once. That gives you time to A/B test variations of those features, catch bugs, and make sure that every new feature actually makes your mobile app better before you charge ahead with it.

12. Monitor Your Site in Real Time with Clicky

Clicky is a real time analytics platform that gives you up-to-the-minute reports of who's on your site and what they're doing, down to the individual user. It also lets you know when your uptime is suffering so you can fix it ASAP. Those kinds of technical issues compromise your customers' experience and can ruin their faith in your company.

13. See Your Customers' Screens with Inspectlet

Inspectlet lets you record individual user's screens and see every click, scroll, and key press they make while using your product. You may think your product is designed intuitively, but you don't know for sure until you've seen customers navigate it themselves.

14. Test Your Product on Real People with UserTesting

UserTesting does the same thing as Inspectlet, except it also supplies the users. UserTesting pays regular people to try out your site, web app, or mobile app, then sends you the footage from their screens. It also takes audio, so you can hear in their own words what the testers like and don't like about your product.

15. Connect Your Data Sources with Segment

Between all your analytics software and other tools that collect important info—your email marketing software, help desk, CRM, survey tools, etc.—it’s easy to get buried in data. Segment lets you integrate all those sources and consolidate your data in one centralized location. It's also got a handy integration with Appcues that allows you to plug all your user onboarding data into your data warehouse.

Gauge the Customer Experience

The tricky thing about churn is that it's a lagging indicator. Customers are typically unhappy for quite a while before they actually pull the trigger and cancel. These tools give your customers a voice and show you what kind of experience they're having, so that you always know where to focus your retention efforts.

16. Send Targeted Surveys with Qualaroo

Qualaroo lets you send timed surveys to your customers at specific locations on your site or in your mobile app. You can also choose which users to target based on characteristics like how long they've been a customer, how you acquired them, or what device they're on. It ensures a constant stream of targeted, specific feedback so you can get ahead of churn.

18. No Customers? Send a Survey Anyway with Qualtrics

Qualtrics specializes in enterprise data collection, but it's a survey software with a twist that's perfect for early stage startups: Its Qualtrics Panels feature can find respondents for you. That way, even if you don't yet have a critical mass of customers, you can still get valuable insights from real people.

19. Create Beautiful, Free Surveys with Typeform

If you're strapped for cash or just want to send the occasional survey on an ad hoc basis, Typeform might be what you're looking for. Its design templates look great on both desktop and mobile, sending them out is a breeze, and you can easily export the data to Excel or one of the 500 other apps Typeform integrates with.

20. Put Your Surveys in Context with Client Heartbeat

21. Send NPS Surveys by Email with Promoter.io

Net promoter score (NPS) is one of the most valuable customer success metrics around. It quantifies how your customers feel about your product, both individually and across the board, and lets them tell you how to improve. This data is so important, Promoter.io built an entire product around it—one that makes NPS easy to collect from customers with great-looking, branded emails.

22. Collect Your NPS Data In-app with Wootric

23. Keep an Eye on Customer Health with Totango

Totango tracks the health of every customer. You can set up health scoring models based on unique actions for different segments of customers, then Totango updates you on who's at risk of churning, who's super engaged and ready for an upgrade, and everything else in between. That way, you're never caught on your heels.

24. Read Your Customers' Warning Signs with Preact's Ptero

Preact is another app that can predict customer health. But instead of having to fuss around with settings and instrumenting your data, Preact uses machine learning to uncover what success and failure look like for your customers and updates you on each one's status.

25. Turn All Your Data into Customer Success Knowledge with Natero

Natero also uses machine learning and data analysis to gauge each customer's health. Its biggest strength is its many integrations. It can pull in data from your CRM, help desk software, and analytics platforms to get the complete picture of every account. The more data you put into Natero, the more powerful it becomes.

26. Solve Involuntary Churn with ProfitWell Retain

Customers don't always cancel because they're unhappy. It's estimated that 20-40% of cancellations come from involuntary churn, which is a fancy way of saying your customers forgot to pay their bills. ProfitWell Retain can gently remind them when it's time to whip out the credit card each month and reduce churn with zero work on your part.

Talk to Your Customers

Whether it's through lifecycle emails, in-app messaging, or push notifications, your customers need to hear from you. A well-placed message can make it easier for new customers to learn your product or nudge old ones back toward it after a period of inactivity. These tools ensure that your messaging to customers is both helpful and resonant.

27. Help Customers Through Onboarding with Appcues

Most apps lose 75% of users within the first week they download it, and it all comes back to onboarding. If customers can't quickly learn how to use your product and start getting value from it, they won't hesitate to leave. Appcues lets you lend a helping hand during this critical period with its in-app messaging. You can point users to your key features so that they never feel lost and can get to that Aha! moment faster.

28. Show Customers how it's Done with Wistia

Video is an incredibly powerful marketing tool, and Wistia is the perfect video hosting platform to help you get started. Just putting one in an introductory marketing email increases click through rate by 96%. It can have similar effects on your onboarding process. Teaching customers to use your app with a video puts a human face on your company right off the bat. Not to mention, a video saves you the trouble of having to explain in words how to use your product—they can see for themselves.

29. Teach Your Customers with Skilljar

Skilljar is a platform that lets you create interactive lessons on how to use your product, complete with videos, quizzes, and forums for your customers to answer each other's questions. You can use it to make onboarding easier or encourage existing customers to adopt new features.

30. Send Relevant Lifecycle Emails with Customer.io

You don't just stop talking to customers after onboarding. You need to keep in touch and send them messages that ensure they continue to be successful with your product. But most marketers just send the same, generic emails to their entire customer base. Customer.io automatically sends unique, behavior-triggered emailsto each customer based on the actions they take within your app. It ensures that every email feels relevant and personalized to each customer.

31. Make Those Emails Beautiful with Litmus

You know what would make those lifecycle emails even more impactful? Making sure they look awesome. Litmus makes it easy to design beautiful emails your customers can't help but click on.

32. Manage Your Newsletter with MailChimp

There's no bigger name in email marketing than MailChimp. MailChimp makes it easy to design and send your newsletter to a list of any size. Its analytics functionality helps you gauge the impact of each newsletter you send, so you can iterate and improve.

33. Ruthlessly Target Your Emails with Vero

Vero makes it easy to make sure you're sending the right emails to the right customers. It pulls together data from all the other tools you use and consolidates it in a unique profile for each customer. That way, you can decide whose inbox each email goes to based on demographic data, purchase history, messaging you've sent them in the past—the possibilities are endless.

34. Nail Your Transactional Emails with SendGrid

Transactional emails aren't sexy, but they remind your customers of the value they get from your product and give them information they need to keep using it. SendGrid lets you rest easy knowing every welcome email, password reset, and post-purchase message gets delivered straight to the right customer's inbox.

35. Let Your Customers Chat with Lifecycle.io's Bots

Most companies can't talk to their users 24/7, but you know who can? A chat bot. Lifecycle.io lets you put helpful chat bots wherever your customers are—Facebook Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp—wherever. Lifecycle.io also pulls data from your CRM to ensure its bots are as helpful as possible to each customer.

36. Segment Push Notifications with Localytics

Push notifications are your mobile app's secret weapon for making sure customers keep using your app. Used effectively they can increase your mobile engagement by a whopping 88%. Localytics lets you send relevant messages to customers at all stages of the lifecycle—from onboarding to power user—based on their levels of activity. It's great for, say, re-engaging a formerly prolific user who hasn't opened your app in a while.

39. Invite Your Users to a Rockin' Conference with EventBrite

Take it from SaaS guru Jason Lemkin. Bringing your customers to an informative, fun event is a great way to make them more loyal to your company, and not just your product. EventBrite makes it easy to set up an event invitation, send it to your customers, and sell tickets.

40. An Oldie but a Goodie: Your Phone

Another pearl of wisdom from Lemkin: Even though lots of people will tell you it's inefficient, talking to your customers on the phone is huge for retention. It reminds your customers there are real people at your company working to make them successful, and no matter what difficulties they're having, they're always more likely to forgive a human being than a faceless company.

Customer Success Software

Ever heard of the service recovery paradox? It's a business concept that's been proven time and time again: If you solve a problem for a customer quickly and effectively, it creates a better impression than if there had been no problem in the first place. These products make it easier for you to solve your customer's problems at scale, day in and day out.

41. Automate Support with Zendesk

Zendesk is by far the biggest player when it comes to help desk software. It lets you set up automatic responses to different kinds of tickets and create documentation that enable customers to fix common issues themselves, both of which are crucial time-savers if you're handling a lot of support requests.

42. Give Conversational Support with Help Scout

Help Scout is a rapidly-growing help desk software making waves in the customer support space. Help Scout is tied to external email addresses that customers simply send a note to whenever they have an issue. Each of those emails in turn creates a support ticket that's visible only to your team. That means that from the customer's standpoint, getting support feels like a normal email conversation with a regular person.

43. Find the Right Ticket Every Time with Freshdesk

Freshdesk is another great help desk option. What sets it apart is its highly flexible filtering system, which makes it easy to sort support tickets by priority, assigned customer success agent, or type of complaint.

44. Keep Customer Success Simple with Groove

Groove's goal is to be the easiest-to-use help desk solution. Its core product consists of a simple inbox that updates with new tickets in real time and streamlines reporting on basic customer success metrics like average reply time and replies per ticket. As your team grows, you can add features like knowledge base documentation and individual customer profiles.

If you're one of the many companies using Salesforce's CRM, then your best option might be to use its help desk sister product, Desk.com. By pulling customer data from Salesforce, Desk gives customer success agents the context they need to give anyone who requests help the best possible solution.

46. Talk to Customers in Real Time with Olark

Olark lets you put live chat windows anywhere on your site so that when customers have a problem, they can start a conversation with one of your customer success agents. And don't worry about getting overwhelmed. During setup, Olark asks you to choose how many live chats your team can handle at one time. When that threshold is met, Olark will take a message and let you get in touch later.

47. Combine Chat and Help Desk with LiveChat

To customers, LiveChat feels just like chatting with a customer success agent. But on your end, it has the powerful ticket creation and analytics features of a full-fledged help desk software. That makes it a great live chat option for larger teams.

48. Give Support its own Slack Channel with Talkus.io

Talkus.io is a chat bot that moves customer success into the place you already spend the majority of your day: Slack. Talkus.io generates tickets, gives you the customer's information, and even lets you get feedback on every interaction with customers, all inside your favorite team communication tool.

50. Plan out the Customer Lifecycle with Gainsight

Gainsight lets your customer success team set personalized success milestones for each customer's lifecycle: when they should finish onboarding, when they should be trying out new features, and when they should be ready to upgrade to your next plan. That way, you always have a benchmark to refer back to of what success looks like for every customer.

My STARTUP :

Let me introduce myself. My name is Richard Nata.I am an author, novelist, blogger and ghost writer. My articles, including short stories have been published in magazines and newspapers since 1994. I have written a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction. So I was a professional in the field of writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

I was born in Jakarta, August 17, 1968.

In 1988, at the age of 20 years, I started working as an accounting staff. Age 24 years has occupied the position of Finance Manager. Age 26 years as a General Manager.

In 1994, my articles published in magazines and tabloids.

In 1997, I wrote a book entitled "Buku Pintar Mencari Kerja". This book is reprinted as much as 8 times. Through the book, the authors successfully helped tens of thousands of people get jobs at once successful in their careers. They were also successful when moving to work in other places.

In 1998, I started investing in shares on Bursa Efek Indonesia (Indonesia stock exchange). As a result of investing in the stock market then I can provide consulting services for companies that want to go public in Indonesia stock exchange.

In theory, in 10-20 years into the future, my startup income, amounting to hundreds of million USD annually can be obtained easily. AND IF FOLLOWED BY MANY COMPANIES IN THE WHOLE WORLD WILL THEN BE A NEW INDUSTRIAL worth trillions USD.

To be honest. Currently I'm not having a lot of money. So I start marketing my startup with blogspot.

My STARTUP :

A story with millions of choices in it - looking investor like you.

Try to imagine this. When you're reading a story on the web or blog, you are given two choices. You can choose the next story based on your own choice. After selecting then you can continue reading the story. Shortly afterwards you will be presented back to the 2 other options. The next choice is up to you. Then you continue the story you are reading. After that you will be faced again with 2 choices. So onwards. The more stories you read so the more options you have taken.

If you feel curious then you can re-read the story by changing your selection. Then you will see a different story with the story that you have read previously. The question now is why is this so? Because the storyline will be varying according to your choice.

I, as the author is planning to make tens of thousands of articles with millions of choices in it. With tens of thousands of articles then you like to see a show of your favorite series on TV for several years. The difference is while watching your favorite TV series, then you can not change the story. Meanwhile, if you read this story then you can alter the way the story according to your own choice.

You might say like this. Sounds like a book "choose your own adventure". Books I read when I was young.

Correctly. The idea is taken from there. But if you read through a book, the story is not so exciting. Due to the limited number of pages. When a child first you may already feel interesting. But if you re-read the book now then becomes no fun anymore because you don't get anything with the amount of 100-200 pages.

Have you ever heard of game books? When you were boy or girl, did you like reading game books? I think you've heard even happy to read it.

A gamebook is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making effective choices. The narrative branches along various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages.

Lihat preview menurut Yahoo

Bantam Books with the Choose Your Own Adventure series has produced more than 250 million US dollars. While I offer you more powerful than the Choose Your Own Adventure. Because of what? Because the story that I made much more interesting than the stories created by the authors of Bantam Books. You will not get anything just to 100-200 pages. While the story that I created is made up of tens of thousands of articles with millions of choices in it.

Based on the above, then you are faced with two choices. Are you interested in reading my story is? Or you are not interested at all. The choice is in your hands.

If you are interested then spread widely disseminated this article to your family, friends, neighbors, and relatives. You can also distribute it on facebook, twitter, goggle +, or other social media that this article be viral in the world. By doing so it is a new entertainment industry has been created.

WHY DO I NEED STARTUP FUNDS FROM INVESTORS? I NEED A LOT OF FUNDS FROM INVESTORS BECAUSE I HAVE TO LOOKING FOR EXPERT PROGRAMMERS(IT).BECAUSE THE DATA IS HANDLED IS VERY LARGE, IT MAY HAVE TO WEAR SOME PROGRAMMERS(IT).I CAN NOT WEAR SOME FREELANCE PROGRAMMER BECAUSE THE DATA MUST BE MONITORED CONTINUOUSLY FROM VIRUSES, MALWARE, SPAM, AND OTHERS.IN ADDITION FUNDS FROM INVESTORS IS ALSO USED TO BUY SERVERS WITH VERY LARGE CAPACITY. FUNDS ARE ALSO USED TO PAY EMPLOYEE SALARIES AND OPERATIONAL COSTS OF THE COMPANY.

FUNDS CAN ALSO BE USED FOR ADVERTISING AND OTHER MARKETING STRATEGIES.FUNDS CAN ALSO BE USED TO ADVERTISE MY STARTUP AND OTHER MARKETING STRATEGIES.

IF I GET A VERY LARGE FUND, THE PART OF THE FUNDS USED TO TRANSLATE THE STORY INTO VARIOUS LANGUAGES.With more and more languages, the more readers we get.

WITH MORE AND MORE READERS, THE MORE REVENUE WE GET.

AS AN INVESTOR THEN YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL ANXIOUS ABOUT YOUR FUNDS. BECAUSE YOUR FUNDS WILL NEVER BE LOST BECAUSE IN 3-5 YEARS YOU HAVE RETURNED THE FUNDS COUPLED WITH PROFIT.

THIS BUSINESS IS ONE AND THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD.

If we can make a good story, so that the readers will come again and again for further reading the story then our earnings will continue to grow and will never diminish. This is due to new readers who continued to arrive, while long remained loyal readers become our customers.

So that the number of our readers will continue to multiply over time. With the increasing number of loyal readership then automatically the amount of income we will also grow larger every year. The same thing happened in yahoo, google, facebook, twitter, linkedin, and others when they still startup.

Deuteronomy {28:13} And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do [them: ]

Try to imagine this. If I give a very unique story. It was the first time in the world. But the world already know this story even liked it. Because the world love the game books. While the story that I made is the development of game books.

Do you Believe ifI dare say if I will succeed because my story will be famous all over the world as Harry Potter?

I believe it. Not because I was the author of the story, but because of the story that I made is unique and the only one in the world.

Income from my startup :

1. Ads. With millions of unique visitors, the price of the ads will be expensive.

2. Affiliate marketing. In addition to advertising, we are also able to put up some banner from affiliate marketing.

3. Contribution of the readers. If you have a million readers and every reader to pay oneUS dollarper year then you will get the income of one million US dollars per year.

If you have a million readers and every reader to pay one US dollar per month then you will get as much revenue twelve million US dollars per year.

4. Books and Comics. After getting hundreds of thousands to the millions of readers of the story will be made in books and the form of a picture story (comics).

5. Movies. If we have a good story with millions of readers then quickly we will be offered to make a film based on the story.

6. Merchandise related to characters. After the movies there will be made an offer for the sale of goods related to the characters.

7. Sales. With millions of email that we have collected from our readers so we can sell anything to them.

Each income (1-7) worth millions to tens of millions of US dollars.

Because each income (1-7) worth millions to tens of millions of US dollars. Then in 10-20 years into the future, AI will be earning hundreds of million USD annually.

So how long do you think my story that I made could gather a thousand readers? Ten thousand readers? One hundred thousand readers? A million readers? Five million readers? Ten million readers? More than ten million readers?

But to get all of it of course takes time, can not be instant. In addition, it takes hard work, big funds and placement of the right people in the right positions.

By advertising, viral marketing, strong marketing strategies and SEO then a million readers can be done in less than a year. Ten million readers can be done in two to three years.

This is the marketing strategy of my startup.

When hundreds of thousands or millions of readers already liked my story then they have to pay to enjoy the story that I made.

If you are a visionary then you will think like this.

With the help of my great name in the world of business, my expertise in marketing, advertising, marketing by mouth, viral marketing, then collecting a million readers to ten million readers will be easy to obtain. Is not that right?

The question now is what if people like my story as they like Harry Potter? You will get tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of email addresses from readers. With that much email, we can sell anything to the readers.

Since April 2013, Wikipedia has around 26 million articles in 285 languages are written by 39 million registered users and a variety of anonymous people who are not known from other parts of the world. Web ranked by Alexa, Wikipedia is a famous website number 6 which has been visited by 12% of all Internet users with 80 million visitors every month and it is only from the calculation of America.

So do not delay. Invest your money immediately to my startup. Take A Look. There are so many advantages if you want to invest in my startup.

WHY YOU SHOULD INVEST YOUR MONEY RIGHT NOW? .

IF YOU INVEST YOUR FUNDS IN ONE, TWO OR THREE YEARS INTO THE FUTURE, YOU MAY BE TOO LATE.BECAUSE IN 1-3 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE THEN I'VE GOT THE FUNDS. THE FUNDS CAN COME FROM SOME INVESTORS, LOANS FROM BANKS OR FROM ADVERTISEMENTS POSTED ON MY BLOG.IF I'VE GOT A LARGE AMOUNT OF FUNDS THEN I'VE NO NEED OF YOUR FUNDS. SO INVEST NOW OR NOT AT ALL.

My BLOG started to be written January 11, 2015. TODAY, MAY 30, 2015, THE NUMBER OF CLICKS HAS REACHED 56,750. SO FAR SO GOOD.

If I get big funds from investors then with a quick story that I wrote will spread throughout the world.So I got acceleration because I can put ads in a large variety of media such as Google AdWords, Facebook, and others. I also can perform a variety of other marketing strategies.

If I do not get funding from investors then my story would still spread throughout the world. But with a longer time, Slow but sure.So either I get funding from investors or not, the story that I wrote will remain spread throughout the world. Ha ... 7xSo don't worry, be happy.

My advice to you is you should think whether the data that I have provided to you makes sense or not .

If my data reasonable then immediately invest your funds as soon as possible.

Then we discuss how we plan further cooperation.

Thank you.

Lord Jesus bless you.

Amen

P.S. The offer letter I gave also to the hedge funds and venture capital and other major companies in the entire world. So who is fast then he will get it.